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Several users in New Zealand and Australia have reported being scammed by travel brochures which arrive by post from Malaysia. The brochures are neatly printed and look very attractive with pictures of holiday destinations in Malaysia.

Boldly presented inside the brochure is a pair of scratch & win coupons. You scratch the ticket and one of them turns out to be winner! You have just bagged a whopping second prize of $170,000 from their sponsor!

The user is unaware that everyone else who has also received the travel brochure would have found that he or she is a winner of the same $170,000 second prize!!

There is a Malaysian number, in the brochure, to call. The person at the other end proceeds to “process & verify” the lucky coupon and comes back later to “confirm” that the user has indeed won the prize which will be “transferred to your bank account”. Sounds so simple, exciting and easy!

The scam will now unfold! The user is told that there is a tax of $7000 to be paid since the transfer will be made out of the sponsors bank in Hong Kong. The company will bear 50% of the taxes and hence $3500 has to be sent to them.

It needn’t always be “taxes”, the scam artists would give other convincing reasons too! For example. they would ask for a Client ID which is printed on the brochure. You would find there is no client ID. They would then inform you that the brochure is supposed to have been sent only to clients of their sponsor “ABC” and hence they will check with “ABC” and get back. (This is a con game)

They will call back to inform that “ABC” being such a large company with world-wide reputation do not want to disappoint you and you will get the prize! You only have to pay $3500 to get an “Authorization Letter”

The victim is asked to send his Bank account details and also wire $3500 to a designated account in Malaysia or Hong Kong

If the victim do not realize that he has already been scammed, the fraudsters induce him to pay more by giving several other bogus reasons.

The scammers keep changing their company names in Travel Brochures to keep the operation fresh & ongoing.

The embassy has requested people who receive the travel brochures to send email ID and website URL of the scammers to the Malaysian Computer Emergency Response Team (MyCERT) at cyber999@cybersecurity.my

Do alert your friends & relatives in New Zealand and Australia about this scam! Share your experience in the “Comment Area” below.